SSLGate is a complete, free standing, application. It is not an IIS add-on.
IIS need not even be installed on the computer where SSLGate resides. The
user specifies its listening port. The default port, for HTTPS, is 443. It
can, however be any port in the event of conflict.
SSLGate is simple to install and simple to administer. Entering a virtual
domain into the database requires entering only 3 fields (4 if there are
DNS restrictions).
The owner of the virtual site can then use HTTPS by referencing their web
pages as follows, where the 'virtual_name' is the 'username' in the screenshot
above :
SSLGate translates this request to an HTTP request to the designated ssl
directory of the target (usually virtual) server. In addition, there is also
an explicit ip address option for each entry. This permits specifying the
domain address (in dotted format) in cases where DNS is unavailable or needs
to be superceeded.
SSL encryption/decryption is computationally intensive. With SSLGate you
can relegate this work to a separate computer, freeing valuable capacity
on highly loaded servers. This is yet another dimension of flexibility gained
by installing SSLGate in your server farm.
SSLGate is invisible to customers. HTTPS requests are relayed through the
gateway to a designated server. Any errors are simply relayed back to the
customer from the server. SSLGate allows the specification of error URL's
should the request be to a server that is down, or for a target that is not
in the database. SSLGate will transparently relay these pages to the user.
The logging scheme used is very simple. Daily totals of requests, bytes uploaded
and bytes downloaded are recorded for each database entry. The owner of the
web site can now see HTTPS stats included with the normal HTTP stats. Clicking
on the 'usage report' will present the daily totals accumulated so far for
that day. Its a quick method to determine if someone is using inordinately
high volumes of HTTPS processing.
A certificate issued by TCP Data is included with SSLGate. This is not issued
by an automatically trusted root certificate authority. As a result, a warning
will be displayed to users:
This warning is only displayed on initial HTTPS page loading. It won't appear
again for the rest of the session. Replacing this certificate with one from
a trusted authority is your option. SSLGate, with the TCP Data certificate
alone, can still be a very attractive alternative.
This following link will enable prospective customers to download the help
file (.hlp) for SSLGate. This will illustrate how easy it is to install and
operate SSLGate.
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